A couple of weeks ago, I saw a video floating around, all over the internet. This guy goes around asking all the parents visiting a theme park if they had a girl child with them? And if they did, their admission to theme park was free. And then he goes around asking them how did they feel now that their daughter earned them free tickets!!!Now, I am all for equality and women empowerment and ‘save the daughter’ movement and understand that the video was about applauding parents who treat their daughters equal to boys but it’s not that simple.
There are two kinds of gender discrimination going on in India. One is the active discrimination where girls are openly treated unequally. The crude form of discrimination where the boys go to English medium schools and girls (if they go, at all) to Hindi mediums, guys get ghee soaked Rotis and girls without (ya, have seen that happening), girls do household chores along with studies while boys play cricket. The kind which the “todays’ parents”, scoff and say “Oh we don’t do that !! We treat our girls the same as our boys!!” And then there is the passive discrimination, the oh-so subtle one, that is more of a concern. Because the active one is drawing criticism from all quarters but it’s the passive one which goes unnoticed and will prove to be a bigger monster in the long run.
What am I talking about? Sending your girl abroad to study, letting her have a boyfriend, letting her choose her career over marriage, not setting an age for her to marry, not nagging her to have kids after marriage, not forbidding her to do daily chores in “those days” and not expecting her to work long hours at her job, come home and do household chores too. The list is endless and 90% of the parents are guilty of at least one of these.
Talking about chores, cooking is one household chore that I absolutely love to do. It’s a great stressbuster for me. I made ‘Khasta Pooris’ and ‘Aachari Aloo’ on this Navmi. Maybe we were super hungry or it was a special occasion or that they were really good, because we must have broken our own previous record of eating Pooris. Rice flour makes the pooris ‘Khasta’ and mango pickle masala makes the Aloo curry absolutely worth fighting for! (In case there is too little left to be shared among too many!) Even though I believe everyday can be an Aloo-Poori day, this (along with my orange kheer) is even more perfect for this karwa chauth!!
Ingredients
- 2 cup whole wheat flour
- 1 1/2 tbsp. rice flour
- 1 tbsp. oil
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 cup water
- 3 1/2 tbsp. oil
- 5 small-to-medium potatoes, diced
- 1/2 medium onion, chopped
- 1 tsp loosely packed grated ginger
- 1 chopped green chili
- 1 tsp cumin seeds
- 1/2 medium tomato, chopped
- 3/4 tsp chili powder
- 3/4 tsp turmeric powder
- 1/2 tsp nigella seeds (kalonji)
- 3 tsp coriander seeds
- 1/4 tsp garam masala
- 1 tbsp. your favorite mango pickle (just the masala, not mango slices, if possible)
- 1 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp cumin powder
- pinch of dry mango powder
- 1 1/2 cup water
- chopped cilantro
Instructions
- Mix flours, oil and salt and mix well.
- Add water little by little and knead a firm dough. Cover and keep aside for 5 -10 minutes.
- Divide the dough into about 30-35 balls or whatever size you prefer.
- Take a heavy bottomed wok and add oil to it for frying. On high heat (8/10) let it get hot.
- Meanwhile, roll the pooris and keep them covered under wet cloth so that they don't dry out.
- Now fry all the pooris and serve them hot with potato curry.
- Heat a pan and add oil to it. Add cumin seeds and let them sizzle.
- Add ginger and green chilies and give it about 30 sec.
- Add onions and cook till translucent. Then add tomatoes. Let them turn mushy.
- Add salt, chili powder, turmeric powder, nigella seeds, coriander powder and cumin powder. Cook till they ooze out oil.
- Add potatoes and stir for a minute and then add water.
- When potatoes are cooked add the pickle, garam masala and mango powder (if needed).
- Add cilantro and serve.
Notes
Pooris have to fried at hot temp at all times.
You can add 1 tbsp. rice flour additionally if you want more crispy pooris.
Try rolling out at least half the pooris so that you can fry them at one time. Rolling and frying one poori at a time heats up the oil at very high temp and gives pooris weird oily smell.
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